Jeremiah 2:4-13
For Sunday, August 28th
Proper 17

I think to understand Jeremiah 2 you have to be the parents of teenage boys.  One time a teenage boy I know well was trying to get into his home.  The doors were all locked and he didn’t have a key.  He decided to solve the problem by kicking in the back door to the garage.  Mind you, this was the very same door the boy’s father had just repaired a day earlier.  Arriving home from work, the father saw the broken door frame, and was incredulous.  “What in the world were you thinking?!”

This is how God is feeling about us in Jeremiah 2.  “What wrong did your ancestors find in me that they went far from me, and went after worthless things, and became worthless themselves?!” (Jer. 2:5).  Reading through the rest of the passage there are a number of other statements underscoring God’s incredulity at his people’s rebellion:

• “When you went your own way you didn’t even ask where I was!” (v. 6)
• “You enter this amazing Promised Land and proceed to defile it!” (v. 7)
• “Your leaders didn’t even ask for me!” (v. 8)
• “Has there ever been another people who changed their god despite those gods being false?!” (v. 11)

God is so incredulous, and so alone in his incredulity, that he’s reduced to talking to the heavens.  “Be appalled, O heavens, at this, be shocked, be utterly desolate, says the Lord” (v. 12).  The two things God was most incredulous about were these:

• “You have forsaken me, the fountain of living water” (v. 13a)
• “You have dug cisterns for yourselves rather than relying on me (and they leak!)” (v. 13b)

Why are we so often so spiritually stupid?  It is because the spiritual synapses of our frontal lobes just haven’t connected.  They need to connect, NOW.  Let’s not waste another day, shall we?   Let’s stop kicking in the doors of God’s inheritance and start asking for his help!